Storytelling in VR: helping children with fear of the dark

• Autor(a) principal: Faustino, Ana Marta dos Remédios Bernardo Pinto
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/28568
• topic: Virtual reality; Phobia of the dark; Children’s games; Storytelling; Interactive narratives; Oculus Go

Though using virtual reality as a substitute for exposition therapy in phobia treatments has become more popular in recent times, many of these treatments require the assistance of a psychologist or a therapist. Furthermore, most of virtual reality therapy is targeted at socially based phobias or anxiety disorders. Fear of the dark is one of the most common fears in children and can develop into a diagnosed phobia in their later lives but has yet to be prevented or treated with virtual reality therapy programs. A measure to help children overcome their fears in a safe environment together with their caretakers could help improve familial relationships and ease the stress that this kind of phobia introduces in home life. This investigation developed, implemented and evaluated a virtual reality prototype with usability testing and established a case study with a final user in an effort to approximate this investigation to reality. It was concluded that the case study documentations find that the user had positive emotional reactions towards the prototype and its narrative. The results of this research’s testing are quite promising, though the final user’s degree of fear is not comparable to a child with a diagnosed phobia of the dark. Future work should therefore include testing with users diagnosed with phobias.